


As Blood Knows Blood

by sunspeared



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bull's Chargers, Dos Horny Boys, M/M, Seheron, The Enigma of Kirkwall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-09
Updated: 2016-12-10
Packaged: 2018-09-06 07:32:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8740540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunspeared/pseuds/sunspeared
Summary: The year is 9:38 Dragon. The Bull's Chargers are stuck in a ruined Kirkwall for two weeks. For lack of anything better to do, the Iron Bull takes on a job accompanying a professional researcher, a Tevinter, on an expedition--into the old, old tunnels that run deep beneath Darktown. They're looking for a tomb. They're looking for a book. There is no way this could possibly go wrong.





	1. The Skin of a Drum

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iodhadh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iodhadh/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"That was... egregious," Pavus said. His voice was disapproving. His face looked like he had about thirty hard-ons at once. "You could have just disarmed them."_
> 
> _"I did disarm them. Two of them, even." Bull looked down at his feet and did some quick math. "Three and a half."_

_So. The enigma of Kirkwall._

_Take one deep harbor, located centrally in-between Val Royeaux, Cumberland, Orzammar, and Wycome. Cumberland itself might have done well enough for a hub city, for all that it's on the Imperial Highway, but it's too far from Antiva; Ostwick's and Hercinia's harbors weren't suited for the ships of the time, and why dredge out their harbors when Kirkwall filled the requirements just as neatly?_

_And thus, the dread city of Emerius. Supplier of fine limestone, drakestone, jet, fool's gold, true gold, and other moderately vital materials to the Imperium at large. A short sail to Cumberland, and then directly up the road to Minrathous. Home to over a million slaves at the height of its power, or so it's said._

_The islands were not originally a feature of the seascape: did you know that? The fine white limestone quarried outside of Kirkwall, from which all Hightown is built, has no match in the stone the Gallows rest on. The mages, drilling down into their prison, found—you think I'm going to say bones, don't you. The bones of slaves, mounded so high they formed new land. Yes, yes, we're talking about the magisters of old, nothing was out of bounds for them,_ was _it. But don't be morbid. It's tedious._

_I get ahead of myself. Or around myself. It is known, amongst those who care about such things, that Emerius is the most likely site for a historical intrusion into the Golden City. Any neophyte student of magic can look at a comprehensive map of Kirkwall, and see the sigils buried in the patterns of the streets. Mind you, such a representation can never truly be made, given the—shall we say—volatile nature of the city's inhabitants, and their distressingly casual attitude toward the layout of their streets. But sigils aren't an uncommon feature of even modern Tevinter city planning; the central district of any city is usually arranged in the shape of some obsolete, inert sigil for joy or prosperity. Certainly, that's the case in Kirkwall's Hightown._

_But the Lowtown sigils have no match in one thousand years of the literature. It's as though... I'm reading a sentence in my own language. I see the punctuation marks, the diacritics. I can even make out a bit of the grammar, if I've really limbered up that day, but the rest of it is utterly incomprehensible—_

-

"Are you going to talk all night, or are you going to buy me a drink?" Iron Bull said.

"I don't see why I can't do both," the 'Vint said, looking up from the scrap of paper on which he was doodling the mystery sigils to show Bull. "I mean to seal our deal with a nice Fereldan whiskey. Or at least the nicest The Hanged Man has to offer."

"Sure," said Bull. "As soon as you get to the point."

The Bull's Chargers, lately Fisher's Bleeders, before their swift change in management, had two weeks before a ship came to take them from Kirkwall to Val Chevin, and nothing to do but drink and wench in the meantime, much to their newly-minted lieutenant's dismay; but Cremisius would get used to that, Bull was sure. He was uptight, for a fugitive, but he was what the Chargers had needed for too long: someone who had ideas about how a mercenary company should be run, and wouldn't take any shit.

In the meantime, Bull had told the local fixer-some dwarf, not Carta—that he was looking for somebody who was looking for muscle, just to keep his hand in, build the Chargers' rep in the Free Marches. And the local fixer had a sense of humor, clearly, because he'd said, "Tiny, have I got a job for you."

Bull wasn't laughing. The 'Vint across the table from him wasn't laughing. He did, however, have a hopeful, tentative smile on his face, like he was waiting to be allowed to resume his speech. He'd called himself Negidius, as in Numerius Negidius, as in _the fucker who doesn't think he owes money_ , which either meant he thought he was funny and that Bull wouldn't know a Tevinter legal term or two, or he wasn't good for payment on the job, or both.

"Put quite simply," Negidius said, "I need an escort into Darktown, and the sewers beneath it. The gentleman who introduced us"—who was over in the corner, playing cards with an elf and a tall redhead, casting glances over at their table to see if the two dogs he'd introduced had started humping yet—"has told me your going rate; I'm perfectly prepared to double it, if it will entice you."

Negidius had a charming smile, Bull would give him that. A little too talky Bull's his usual tastes. The little emphasis on _entice_ was interesting. He didn't seem like a bad guy, except for the part where he carried himself like an altus: comfortable, smug, secure in the knowledge he was the most dangerous thing in most rooms, and wherever he wasn't, he would be soon. 

"You're a mage," Bull said.

"A dangerous accusation to throw around in Kirkwall, especially with a war on."

"And an altus."

If he was surprised Bull had pegged him, he didn't show it. "Yes, and all of my papers from the embassy in Starkhaven are in order, Knight-Commander, please don't throw me in the brig, or however the benighted South contains mages of my caliber. Maker's reeking taint, why do you care?"

"You say you want to go into the sewers," Bull said, leaning back in his chair and lacing his hands over his belly. "You're ready to pay out the ass for it. You're willing to work with a"—not qunari, he always had to take a moment to remind himself, no cover was seamless—"Tal-Vashoth, which either means you need someone big to hide behind, or no one else will take the job. Which one is it?"

At the mention of hiding, Negidius's nostrils flared. There was a sore spot, right there. "Come outside with me," he said, and pushed up from the table.

Double his usual fee was a whole lot of money. Bull followed him, to the broad, stinking street outside the Hanged Man. Lowtown was never quiet, even at night. He'd been here once before, on standby with some other agents for an op in the mountains to the north, but he hadn't been needed; the Tallis who'd been given charge of rooting out a traitor had taken care of it (but who put a Tallis in charge of anything, he'd wondered at the time), and Bull had joined the Bleeders not long after, and hadn't returned to the Free Marches since.

Nothing had changed, except the gap in the skyline where the big Chantry used to be. Somebody was pissing in the alley at the side of the building. Somebody a few streets over was either fucking in an alleyway or getting robbed, or both, from the way the sound of it. Numerius gazed up toward Hightown, at the endless steps, at the hulking outline of the Viscount's Keep at the summit of the city. From a distance, it wasn't that much of a shithole.

"My name is Dorian Pavus." He said it like it should mean something to Bull. "I'm a... private researcher. A sort of mercenary academic, if you will. My employer du jour, after spending a great deal of money on mapping the sewers, has charged me with finding the final resting place of a certain magister. I have in my possession the journal of an adventurer, published in the Steel Age, who purports to have traveled extensively beneath Kirkwall. Only one of his journeys is of interest, however—the tomb of a Magister Herminia, who was reportedly buried with a trove of books."

"They say they find books down there sometimes."

"Most of the libraries in Emerius were burned in slave rebellions. The Tevinters saved what they could, however they could."

"So you, what, want to go down there and find them?" Bull asked.

"No, I _want_ to be sitting naked on beach in Antiva, being fanned and fed peeled grapes by oiled servants. I've been _hired_ to go into the sewers and retrace a madman's steps, to find a tomb that may or may not be there, and possibly die in the process. There's a difference."

So Pavus really was a mercenary. Bull snorted. "How are you going to get the books out?"

"Not books—just one. I've made some preliminary surveys of Darktown"—he turned his face to show Bull the bruise on his jaw—"but it's becoming difficult to fight bandits off _and_ hide my magic, given the current climate of the city."

"I heard it was just as picturesque before the Chantry blew up."

"There's something to be said for charred buildings and piles of rubble, yes," said Pavus. "Not to mention the ceaseless robbery attempts, the clumsy pickpockets, and whatever those bits of rubber they sell down at the docks and expect you to believe are 'oysters' truly are."

"What you're saying is, this place is a mess, and you're going to go digging in the shit."

"Essentially."

Pavus leaned on the wall, then thought better of it, when the drunk from the alley came shambling out around the front, hiking up her trousers as she went. She paused in her tracks to stare at Bull-yeah, a big old qunari standing right out on the street, in a city that had seen two invasions from people like him-and then, like so many Kirkwallers, she decided it was none of her business and went back into the tavern.

"I get that a lot," Bull said.

"I can't imagine why," Pavus replied, glancing up and down Bull's body. Subtle, he was not. "You were right on both counts, however: I do need the largest, strongest fighter my employer's funds can buy, and no one else is willing to take this job. Do you know what the Veil is?"

Bull knew exactly what it was, but with Pavus's type, it didn't hurt to play a little dumb. "Keeps us on our side. Keeps the demons on theirs."

On cue, like Bull had jerked a string on the back of his head, Pavus rolled his eyes. "Something to that effect, yes. That the Veil is thin in Kirkwall is a well-documented phenomenon"—he'd fallen back into his textbook voice—"but the rumors of its permeability in the Undercity are mostly unsubstantiated by any _reputable_ scholars. Whether because it's untrue, or they don't get very far before they—"

"What you're saying," Bull cut in, "is that there might be demons, but probably not."

"Essentially." Pavus blinked. "Yes. Will that be a problem?"

 _It abso-fucking-lutely is a problem, you crazy 'Vint bastard_ warred with _Of course not, I can kill anything._

"There might be demons anywhere a mage is," Bull said, instead.

The money was right. He'd seen enough abominations on Seheron to know how to get rid of them. He didn't like it, but he could. Saarebas had a role in the world, and that role was as blind, mute, walking dreadnoughts (and even the walking was optional) but no matter how the Qun tried to keep them from corruption, no system was perfect.

It was thoughts like those that had gotten him sent to the mainland. Thoughts like: maybe this isn't worth it, maybe this has been wrong from the start, and please wipe my mind, send me off to break rocks in a quarry somewhere. I can't do this anymore. Let me still be of use.

But here he was. Still of use. Not Hissrad anymore, but still lying.

"Well, that's certainly—obvious," Pavus was saying. "Here I thought a Tal-Vashoth would have a more liberal view of mages."

"You thought wrong," said Bull.

"I suppose the question isn't what you think of mages"—he arched an eyebrow that might have been aristocratic and impressive, if Bull hadn't spent so much of his career as a spy burying his axe in as many smug altus faces as he could find—"but whether you'll work with one."

Hissrad had always been in favor of 'Vints dying, whether it was of him, or of their own stupidity. It wasn't even a waste of a good-looking man. There were plenty more where Pavus came from, every one of them cast from the same mold: noble nose, heavy brow, long mouth, thick, dark hair. And the Iron Bull had the time. Better than sitting with his thumbs up his ass—or someone else's thumbs up his ass, he wasn't picky—waiting for a ship, drinking at a different place every night, watching Krem struggle at keeping order.

And it was a _lot_ of money. Fuck it.

"I'll do it. Three-quarters payment up front, for the danger," Bull said. Pavus was his favorite kind of boss: the kind who didn't know what he was getting into, money-wise. Not that Bull did, either. Krem and a little dwarven woman Bull had only spoken to twice handled all that. "The Chargers bank in Val Royeaux; the dwarf has a copy of our contracts, and he'll handle the details. Now buy me that drink, and tell me what I need to prep."

"How do I know you won't simply knife me in the back and leave me to die in a ditch?"

“It's a little late to be worrying about that, big guy," said Bull. "You're in Kirkwall."

* * *

 

The safest way into Darktown proper, the fixer had said, without clarifying exactly what he meant by 'safe,' was a little doorway on the Docks. From there, you went down about a hundred feet of stairs, came out into a disused sewer tunnel that you wouldn't know was disused, from the smell, and then up a mineshaft, into a rattling elevator that clanged into the walls all the way down, at which point Bull began to suspect that the dwarf had been screwing with them. Only when they stepped out into somewhere with real sunlight, rather than Pavus's veilfire or the glowing moss on the walls, did Bull exhale.

"We're somewhere beneath Hightown, I believe," Pavus said. "It would be disingenuous to call Darktown nothing but a sewer. An Undercity, in the most literal sense." He stepped off the elevator, Bull close at his shoulder. The people bustling around the shaggy collection of stalls barely looked up at the two of them, but they were strangers, and Bull could feel the crowd focus on them. "They said there was a market, but I hardly believed them," Pavus went on, removing his staff from its carrying sling one-handed. "And, look, there's the healer's clinic, down there. A different healer, since the last one—well. We all know what happened with the last one."

"Put your staff away," said Bull. "We don't want any trouble."

Pavus got a mulish look on his face as he led the way. "I'm sure trouble will manage to find us, and when it does, I'd like to be ready. I was saying, however—an Undercity. No one's gotten deep enough to study its culture and economy, but for Brother Genitivi, and I think we all know Brother Genitivi was largely full of shit. "

"Brother Genitivi. Genitivi." Bull wrinkled his nose, like he was deep in thought. Like Genitivi's works weren't translated into Qunlat, annotated to within an inch of their lives by the Ben-Hassrath, and made into mandatory reading for field agents. "The guy with the broken leg?"

"Yes, at Haven." There wasn't a map in his hands, but Pavus seemed to know where he was going. Bull marked each turn, just in case. This part of Darktown wasn't so bad, even though it stank enough to make Bull retch, if he breathed in too hard through his nose. Chaos above was good for the pockets of the people below. "If such a place exists," Pavus was saying. "Now, mind you, I can believe that he discovered the ruin of a possible site of the _theorized_ Temple of Sacred Ashes, but no serious scholar could be expected to believe in a secret town full of mad dragon cultists." He paused at a staircase, looking both ways. "You're very knowledgeable, Iron Bull."

The way he said it—with a smile that was more reflex than truth, just a flash of jarringly white teeth—got on Bull's nerves. "I've read a few books in my life," he said. "Here and there."

Pavus went down the staircase. "The fixer called the Bull's Chargers an 'eclectic outfit.'"

That fixer talked too damn much for Bull's liking. They were a bunch of strays, was what they were. "You could say that," Bull replied.

"And how did you come to be their leader?"

"I thought we already did the interview."

"Forgive me if I want to get to know the person I've—charged—with watching my rear."

Bull shrugged. It was a shitty joke, it was an opening to flirtation, both of which he liked, neither of which he was going to give into, even if he'd gotten a pretty good view of that rear on the way down. An altus was an altus. It was a safe bet, that as soon as Pavus was done with him, he'd stab Bull in the back, or try to. With that in mind, Bull said, "I'm good at killing things."

To Bull's satisfaction, one of Pavus's boots got stuck in something that might have been mud at the bottom of the steps. "But a mercenary captain," Pavus continued, undeterred, "needs a working knowledge of tactics, stratagems, maintaining military discipline, managing money, contractual language...."

"And a big, dumb oxman like me couldn't pick any of that up?"

"That's not what I meant. There are plenty of professional, well-regarded Tal-Vashoth companies, after all. I was only wondering—"

"Quit while you're ahead," Bull said.

With a shrug, Pavus shut up, and simply led the way.

They were deeper into Darktown now, well away from the weak sunlight from the cliffside. There were fewer people down here, mostly elves, a few humans. Not the crowds of the over-Undercity, but enough to feel inhabited. It smelled cleaner, too, and along the walls, there were tents, and even little shacks, supported by the walls. It was a residential district. It felt lived-in, almost nice, for an illegal underground city full of criminals.

Some mage had set up balls of bright white-green veilfire at even intervals, which bobbed and swayed in the breeze through the tunnels. The cast of the light made every crevice in the wall stand out in sharp relief, and made everybody who looked up at them look hollow-faced and tired. The ceiling, far above the veilfire's reach, was deep in shadow. There were different levels to this corridor, three stories up and down, veering off in wildly different directions. A mine access tunnel, probably. Bodies and carts went in, who knew had gone out, or how long ago. Above them, a lone vendor was hawking her wares.

And someone was following them.

They'd had tails when they'd arrived, but they'd been curious, not threatening, and so Bull had put them out of his mind. His instincts didn't get out of bed for anything less than a company of Fog Warriors tracking his every move through the jungle. Most of the tails had peeled off at the staircase, when the pursuit would become obvious—all of them except for this one, who must have taken a different route to intercepted them down here.

"These shouldn't be able to sustain themselves," Pavus murmured, nodding up at the veilfire. "Without a mage around to constantly reinforce their connection to the Veil, they should burn themselves out within a day. But no one has used magic down here in at least a year."

"Sure," Bull said, listening for the footsteps above them. The walls of the corridor were packed earth, but the ceiling was so high that, no matter how careful whoever it was tried to be, whenever they kicked a stray pebble, it echoed through the place. Someone who didn't know what they were listening for might write it off as the tunnels crumbling, or water dripping, but Bull had been ambushed one too many times "Real interesting."

"Interesting? It's fascinating, Iron Bull. Every city, you know, creates its own local peculiarities and anomalies in the Veil, as a consequence of so many people packed into one place—"

"Shut it," Bull said, holding up a hand. Of course an altus cared more about the lights than about how the people down here managed to make it work. Where they got their water. How they got rid of waste.

"If I'm boring you," Pavus said acidly, "please, let me know."

"Veil, anomalies, people." Bull grabbed Pavus's shoulder and pulled him behind him. It wasn't easy, he noted distantly. There was some meat to him. "Got it. Fascinating." The tents and shanties had stopped about fifty feet back, leaving only a thin stream of people headed deeper into the Undercity on their business, as the corridor narrowed. Their tail stopped when Bull stopped.

And now, Bull thought, the ambush.

Six people, well-armed and nasty-looking, blocked the corridor. "Fuck's sake, I don't have time for this," someone behind Bull and Pavus muttered, and went through the ambush, shouldering through the line of thugs, muttering, "Bunch of gobshites," as she passed. They let her go.

"I'm guessing we won't be afforded the same courtesy," Pavus said, holding his hands wide. "Gentlemen, ladies, et cetera. My companion and I don't have any money, and we certainly don't have any valuables." As he spoke, Bull felt a tingling in his skin, and then a distant rushing in his ears: a barrier. The company 'archer' didn't usually put them down on Bull, or put them down at all, but he knew one when he felt one. Pavus took a step back behind Bull and to the left, well out of the radius of Bull's wind-up and swing. "I," he went on, "don't see why there needs to be any unpleasantness."

Nothing. Stony silence. The archer's hand twitched on their bow.

"Very well." Pavus sighed. "Have it your way."

And then the two thugs in the center of the line convulsed, threw their heads back, and let loose the most horrible, broken shrieks Bull had heard since Seheron, like someone had poured hot lead into their lungs. On either side of them, their comrades fell back in shock; the archer fumbled with their arrow, and Pavus cleared his throat, as if to say, Get on with it, then.

It was fast. It was easy. Sewer cutthroats didn't deal well with people who weren't immediately rattled, let alone people who rattled them right back. Bull took the archer out first—their fault, for not having the high ground. Then the first screamer, and only when she went down did the rest of them wake up and decide to give Bull a real fight.

Even with the barrier cutting him off from the sensation of knives and swords, his blood was alive and singing. They were no match for him. No one was a match for him. Whatever Pavus was doing from the rear had all of them spooked in turn, because each and every one of them flinched and looked over their shoulders in the exact moment before Bull separated them from their limbs.

And when it was over, Bull stood panting in the middle of their corpses. He turned back to look at Pavus as the barrier dropped and the blood sloughed off him. That was a shame, right there. Nothing like a big qunari covered in gore to clear the path.

"That was... egregious," Pavus said. His voice was disapproving. His face looked like he had about thirty hard-ons at once. "You could have just disarmed them."

"I did disarm them. Two of them, even." Bull looked down at his feet and did some quick math. "Three and a half." He was getting too old to be that athletic. Five years ago, he wouldn't have broken a sweat. But he felt good, clean, like some of the filth from the city above, from a year and a half of selling his strength for coin, had been purged from him.

Six bodies on the ground. None of them was small enough to be the gang's lookout. He looked out into the dim corridor they were headed down and saw nothing, only to hear a grunt and a choking noise from behind him: Pavus, sliding a knife between the lookout's ribs. Where'd a mage learn to do that so cleanly, to get the dagger right up in the heart, without any hesitation, so the attacker died instantly?

"On second thought, a bit of senseless brutality just might be the deterrent we need," Pavus said, cleaning his blade off. There was a vivid red stain across the front of his traveling cloak, and he looked down at it with a deep frown. "I don't suppose you have a handkerchief?"

Bull patted his bare chest and sides down, then checked his nipples for good measure. "Nope."

There was one thing, he thought, taking the fight apart in his head, relishing the only good action he'd had since they entered Kirkwall proper: he and Pavus fought well together. He would take a good archer at his back over a mage any day, but there was something to be said about the ice thing Pavus had done toward the end. He hadn't gotten cocky and tried to wade into the middle of things. If they just got into skirmishes and didn't say a word for each other for the rest of the trip, they'd get along great. But:

"Next time," Bull said, "could you leave a few of them not, you know..." He clutched the sides of his face and rolled his eyes back into his head. "Not that it wasn't great, big guy. It was great."

"I suppose I could," Pavus said, and, having given up on cleaning his robes, forged onward.

"Because if I didn't see that coming, they sure as shit didn't," Bull went on. "You see a guy with a staff, you think, oh, he's just going to throw a fireball at me, I'd better get my shield up. The screaming—nice touch. But it's just better if they're shitting their pants because of me."

"Duly noted." Pavus pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and, almost unconsciously, crooked his finger at a ball of veilfire. It came down from its post to hover over the page. 'We're nearly there," he said, then looked at the little light next to him, which bobbed up and down, almost puppy-like.

Pavus reached out to put his—his fucking hand on the light, into it, and the corners of his lips turned up, very slightly. "You're lonely," he said to it. "Very well, come along." He looked up at Bull. "Unless you have some objection?"

"It likes you," Bull said, swallowing. He didn't like it, not so close to him. Magic was a tool. "We'll need light."

*

_They say that, deep enough below Kirkwall, demons can step through the Veil and contact mortal men. I say that's absurd._

_You see, my friend: genuine tears in the Veil are rare. It can be warped, temporarily, and demons can be brought through, but a rift, an open door? Nearly impossible to create. Imagine—this is a clumsy analogy—imagine the skin of a drum, stretched tight: you slap it, and the sound reverberates through the air. The harder you hit it, the larger the sound you produce. The skin yields when you beat it, but only very slightly. Hit it enough times in the same place, it grows thinner from use: local peculiarities and anomalies, as I said. But under normal circumstances, the mere force of your hand would not be enough to cause the drum to tear. It's made of sterner stuff._

_You would need a hammer to pierce it. Or a knife._

_Or an explosion—_

*

"Hey, here's an idea," Bull said, his voice nearly swallowed up by whatever dark, cavernous space they'd emerged into, from the tunnel. He waited for it to bounce off the ceiling and come back to him. He waited for a long time.

"Yes?" Pavus said.

"Let's not talk about demons getting through the Veil. Let's not."

"Am I frightening you?"

Fear was good. Fear would keep him sharp. Here, in the dark, with just their light bobbing long behind them, circling over their heads, anything could happen. Anything could be lurking, waiting for them. When it found them, he'd kill it, but it had to show itself, first.

They'd come to the center of what Bull had started thinking of as the neighborhood, down a blind alley, to a plain wooden hatch in the ground. Nothing remarkable. Nothing to distinguish it from the dozen other hatches and manholes they'd passed along the way. But Pavus had nodded and said, This is the place.

A short trip down a ladder, then a steep, cold walk down a tunnel, with the light—Glowball, Pavus had taken to calling it, like it was a person—illuminating their way. It was a solid mile down below the surface, by Bull's reckoning. The mine shaft they'd ended up in was wide enough Bull wasn't worried about his horns, and tall enough to accommodate him, too. It couldn't have been built with qunari in mind, but Bull wasn't complaining.

"Absolutely," Bull said. "You're not scared?"

"Iron Bull, I am scared shitless," Pavus said. "It's so—silent. I've never been anywhere this quiet. Do you know? Where it presses down at you like a hand. "

"Hence the talking."

"I would be talking either way," he said, with a nervous chuckle. "I do love the sound of my own voice."

Clearly. Above them, Glowball flickered, almost like a laugh, which wiped the smile right off Bull's face.

"Pavus," Bull said. "Is that fucking thing listening to us?"

Without looking up from his examination of the book, Pavus said, "Possibly. So far as I can tell, it's some kind of minor spirit, trapped on this side of the Veil in the form of, well. A glorified lantern. It can't communicate with us in any meaningful way, but it must have a rudimentary understanding of human speech."

"Huh. You said it shouldn't be out here at all."

"At some point, the people who oversaw these mines must have used innumerable spirits as lanterns," Pavus replied. "Hundreds of thousands, possibly. Millions-enough to create a permanent... impression, and leave some stranded on this side of the Veil, even once those who summoned them were gone. The practice wasn't uncommon in the old Imperium, but it's a bit crude, all told. One never knows what one will bring over."

"Great."

"Suppose you were deceived into bringing over a greater demon, which was subsequently content to hide as a light until such time as it could wreak real havoc—"

"You know what," Bull interrupted, "I'm good not knowing any more."

"—which is highly unusual behavior for a greater demon, I'll have you know. Pride, desire—they're rarely content to hide as lesser spirits for long. Our friend here is barely sentient," Pavus assured him. "Minor spirits are my area of expertise; if it were something sinister, I would know. Don't worry."

Bull was not reassured.

They walked on. Pavus seemed to know the way, and took the turns confidently. For a while. The first time he hesitated at a turn and consulted his book, nothing was wrong. The second time, he unfurled his entire map, and called Glowball down to give him extra light. Third and fourth times, they were on the right track. The fifth time, he was visibly frustrated, and paced back and forth along a path with four forks to it.

"You okay?" Bull asked, at last.

"The wording is vague," Pavus said. "Old Tevinter writers talked around the point for pages before getting to it. I thought I would know when I got down here, that I would feel it, but... nothing. And if we go the wrong way here, we may never make it out again."

"Two lefts, a right, two more rights, straight for three hundred feet, ignore the path on your left as you go up—"

"You remember all that?"

"We've all got talents," Bull said. "I've got a good sense of direction. Yours is sounding like you've swallowed a couple of textbooks in your life."

"If I'm boring you, I'll stop."

Bull snorted. "Nah. I don't mind. It's interesting. Besides, I bet you've swallowed bigger things and lived to tell the tale."

The succession of expressions that passed over Pavus's face went something like: delight, barely suppressed. A snort—a honk, even—of laughter. Then shock, then an eerie blankness, like nothing in the last ten seconds had happened.

On Seheron, Bull had gotten friendly with a few 'Vints, which was to say, his dick had led him across enemy lines once or twice. It happened. He'd played a lot of roles in ten years, whatever they'd needed him to be. Sometimes he was a honeypot; he was good for that kind of work, even though his superiors always edited out the "tool of the Qun" jokes in his mission reports. Once he'd met somebody he liked, and she'd happened to have cut two of his fingers off the day before. It had always been women. Tevinter men—no one had time for that. He was here to chop things up if they looked at them funny, not deal with a rich boy's hangups about getting fucked in the ass, for all that he'd looked at Bull the other night like he wanted to eat him.

"Did I get something on my face, Pavus?" Bull said, before the silence could become awkward. "No? You were picking a path."

"Second from the right," Pavus said. "Let's go in the morning, if that has any meaning down here. For now, let's make camp, shall we?"

They made a fire. They took five hour watch shifts. Bull had smuggled some sweet rolls into his pack, which he ate when Pavus wasn't looking, after the second watch. They set off in good spirits, only for them to fade when they came to a—not a dead end. A huge stone door, taller than Bull, set seamlessly into the end of the path.

"Well," Pavus said. "That's interesting. That's certainly not in the book."

"No shit," Bull said, and went for the handle.

Nothing happened.

Bull gave the handle another shake. "Never had a problem with one of these before," he said.

Pavus crossed his arms. "Doors, you mean?"

"Nah, I've run into trouble with doors plenty of times," Bull clarified. "I hear I have a way with knobs, though."

"Get out of the way, let me try," Pavus snapped, and shouldered around him, but not before Bull saw him roll his eyes, saw his mouth twist like he wanted to chuckle. So there _was_ a sense of humor in there, underneath all the layers of—'Vint. 

Pavus felt at the knob, his fingers moving up and down it with intent, then went around the edge of the door. "Magically sealed," he said, more to himself than to Bull. "This isn't wood, no matter how it looks, so don't try to chop it. I'm going to try to...."

He frowned and placed his hand in the center of the door, then shut his eyes. Something magic was clearly about to happen, so Bull took a step back, as Glowball rushed forward to illuminate the door.

It occurred to Bull that maybe they should really just turn around and backtrack to the crossroads—

Glowball went dark—

And the door lit with a burning sigil, spreading out from Pavus's hand. It looked like scrollwork, or writing, something in between, and spread out to the corners, seeped out into the wall, at which point it was swiftly sucked back into Pavus's hand, up his arm. In the absence of any other light, Bull could see the it under his skin, running in his veins like blood.

"As I thought," Pavus said, as Glowball slowly came back to itself, "my ancestor came down this way. She made this door, or had a hand in its making."

"How can you know that?" Bull asked. He didn't want the answer, not really, but Pavus looked so pleased with himself he going to tell Bull anyway.

And sure enough, Pavus said, "Blood knows blood, and they were freer with theirs, in those days." But there was a distaste in his voice that Bull hadn't expected. A 'Vint with a genuine disgust for blood magic was as rare as a three-horned qalaba; maybe Pavus had had a bad run-in.

"We could go back," said Bull. "We don't have to go in there."

"No, we don't," Pavus said, and opened the door.

They stepped out, and down, into ankle-deep water. It was perfectly odorless, and it had been perfectly still until their boots disturbed it. Pavus flicked a hand, and Glowball flew up above them, casting a weak circle of light onto the water. The only thing apart from the water was the wall of the chamber itself: smooth, well-laid brick, featureless, and curved as far as the eye could see, with a deep groove at Bull's waist height. Pavus flicked his hand again, and Glowball went higher, higher, until its light disappeared and they stood in darkness. No roof in sight. Either the path had gone downward at a grade so slight Bull hadn't noticed it, or the chamber ran the height of the cliff. No way out in sight but way the way they'd come in, which had closed behind them.

"We've seen it," Bull said. "Let's go back. See if we can pick the right path. This time."

"I suppose a qunari wouldn't have any interest in his ancestry, but I do," Pavus replied, and took a cautious step forward. "Ten minutes, and we can go back."

"Fine, big guy."

He would have felt better if they'd run into demons. You could put your axe in a demon. Big, creepy pool, crazy 'Vint walking ahead of him, running a finger through the groove in the wall, _completely harmless_ spirit bobbing along with them like it was having the time of its life—he hadn't signed on for this, but here he was. On the other hand, there was the chance that this was completely harmless. The very slim chance, because this was Kirkwall, and even the seagulls at the docks were trying to kill you.

Pavus and his damn finger on the wall. He was humming one of the songs from the tavern the other night, from before someone had thrown a chair at the bard. If he sang, Bull bet he'd have a nice voice. The sound had nothing to bounce off, and went out into the void, which was better than silence, Bull supposed. But that _wall—_ it was too regular to be natural. Too even. Nobody laid bricks that well.

"Interesting," Pavus said, pulling his hand away from the wall, examining it, rubbing it together with his thumb. He glanced up at the ceiling, one eyebrow raised speculatively.

"What?" Bull said. "What's interesting?"

"Nothing." Pavus shook his head, pressed his free hand to his forehead. "Nothing, just—"

Then he stopped dead in his tracks, bent at the waist, and retched. Bull lunged forward and grabbed him by the back of the collar before he could fall on his face in the water. Pavus let out a low moan, and his eyes fluttered shut, as he clenched his jaw and tried to steady himself, and this was _not_ happening: Pavus's map was nothing but a sketch, damn near unreadable, and if Bull forgot one turn he'd be lost for days trying to make his way back to the surface.

"What's wrong?" Bull asked, giving Pavus a desperate little shake. "For fuck's sake, Pavus—"

"Nothing," Pavus replied, voice hoarse. He retched again, then coughed. "A memory. Memories. In the stone. Don't touch the bricks. Get away from the wall, get _away_ , get me toward the center of the chamber."

Whatever was happening, Bull didn't need to be told twice. With Glowball lighting the way, he dragged Pavus away from the wall as fast as he could, until the ground stopped, suddenly, under his back foot. The water was deep; they'd been standing on the edge of a pool. The shore of a lake, even. A margin of thirty feet separated them from whatever had spooked Dorian, and he roused, now, pulled himself out of Bull's arms and took his staff from his back, propping himself up on it like a walking stick. Or holding it in front of him, like a ward.

"Blood knows blood," Pavus said. "I cut myself. Look down at the floor under our feet."

Glowball came down to the water's dark surface and moved around them in a circle, illuminating more lines in the floor. There was no way Bull was touching those, after what they'd done to Pavus. They made strange whorls as far as his eye could see, weird patterns that all his instincts demanded he look away from, and look away he did.

"We're not supposed to be here," Bull said.

The words weren't his. They came out of his mouth, but they weren't _his_. If something got in his head down here, at least he was _down here_ , away from anything he might hurt. He took a deep breath, tried to call up something from the Qun, something applicable, something to calm him down, but _We're not supposed to be down here_ filled him up.

"You're hearing it, too," Pavus murmured. "It's been in my head since I touched the wall. I didn't want to worry you, but, well. You see how well that worked out. Listen to my voice, Iron Bull. Calm down. Whatever you do, _don't_ fall into the water."

Somewhere behind them, a cold red light illuminated the darkness. It spread, treacle-slow, through the long line in the wall, up, filling the unseen channels that ran toward the impossible roof and down into the water.

"I cut myself," Pavus repeated, summoning up a light of his own to cast in front of them. Glowball illuminated the pool's edge as they went, keeping them out of it. "An accident. The wall tasted me, and I knew what this room was for. The grooves are made for blood, you see," he went on, and he sounded rattled, really rattled, for the first time since they'd come down here. "A drop was enough to—wake it—"

"Hey," Bull said, keeping an eye on that light's spread toward them. _You shouldn't be down here—_ was that a woman's voice?—"can we skip the exposition and get the fuck out of here?"

Pavus offered his hand. "I thought you'd never ask."

They ran, or tried, as best as they could, with their hands linked and Pavus's staff swinging everywhere, splashing water as they went. _You shouldn't be down here._ No. _Shok ebasit hissra_. Struggle was an illusion. Bull's heart pounded against his chest. He couldn't look back. If he looked back, if he looked too hard, they wouldn't make it out alive. Water had gotten inside his boots, into his socks, but that was only flesh; he was not flesh, his role was to run.

All the while, the light gained on them, running under the water, racing alongside them, almost as though it was toying with them. Iron Bull, Hissrad, Ashkaari, who had always wanted to _know_ too damn much for his own good, turned around to look, and he could see the roof of the cavern, miles above them, the light inscribing a seven-pointed star.

He lost his balance. He tripped.

He went down with a colossal splash, face-down and useless. He must have scraped something—what it was didn't matter—the blood hit the water, and diffused. The blood met the floor beneath the water. The blood remembered:

*

_Shivering men and women, humans and elves alike, lined up for hours down the path, underneath the limestone mine, past the miners' sewer tunnels. There were hundreds of them, they thought, as one mind, as one vast, suffering body. Surely, they could overpower the magister and her soldiers, if only they could act together. If only one of them had the courage in their heart to pick up a stone and throw it. To break loose from the chains they'd been struggling against for hours._

_They knew what was at the end of that line, and there wasn't anything they could do about it._

_The screaming had stopped hours ago._

*

"Ah," someone said, when Bull came to. "You're awake. _That's_ heartening."


	2. Lead in Your Boots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Of course I saved you," he went on, and his voice was a little hoarse, too. "If you die, my deposit is forfeit, and I have to pay damages to the Chargers. It's all there in the contract."_

Bull came to himself with a start, felt his stomach heave and his mouth flood, pushed himself up onto his elbow, and threw up.

"My thoughts exactly," Pavus—Dorian Pavus, boss of the moment, had obviously just dragged his massive ass out of a blood eating death trap room—that guy—added, and held out a waterskin for him. "Take all the time you need. Don't try to speak; I can talk enough for both of us."

His gut churned. He didn't have the strength to turn onto his back, let alone sit up, let alone drink. "What happened—"

"There you go, talking." Pavus came to him and, with some doing, helped him sit up and dribble some water down his throat. "Of course I saved you," he went on, and his voice was a little hoarse, too. "If you die, my deposit is forfeit, _and_ I have to pay damages to the Chargers. It's all there in the contract."

Right. The contract. The job. Bull's head was throbbing too hard to remember everything that was in it. That was why he had Krem. He managed to take the waterskin in his own hand, because he'd be dust before he let a 'Vint spoon-feed him like his tama, but it dangled there, useless.

"Would you like to know what happened in there, as best as I understand it?"

Bull shrugged. There had been blood. There'd been people, waiting to die.

"I can only imagine you don't, but I'm going to tell you either way," Pavus said. He sounded calm, but it was forced. Whatever he needed to do to get himself through it. "There are evils in this world greater than demons and darkspawn, for a start."

"I've met a few magisters that fit the bill," Bull said.

Undeterred, Pavus continued, "So have I. And there are old stories about abominations and running water. They're all horseshit, but it's why so many Circles are built on islands. The Gallows, here in Kirkwall. The Vyrantium Circle, where I took my enchanter's exam. Kinloch Hold in Ferelden. They must have still put some stock in them, in Magister Pavarius's time. I haven't the first idea what she was trying to bring through the Veil by killing so many people, but, seeing how I'm here, she mustn't have been successful."

"Pavarius?"

"Herminia Pavarius. My ancestor. It's been nearly a thousand years, Iron Bull," Pavus said. "Of course the family name has changed a bit. To see her time through her eyes, however...."

He trailed off into silence. Whatever screwed-up shit he'd seen in there, Bull could care less. "Give me half an hour to rest," Bull said, after another drink. "Then we can go back to that crossroads. No more doors. Got it?"

"You need to rest for a few _hours_ ," Pavus snapped. "You've been through an ordeal."

"I tripped," Bull said flatly. "I scraped my elbow. I saw some weird shit. I fainted. It's nothing." All those people, waiting to die, convinced it was the only way, the way things should be. Asit tal-eb. If he dwelled on it, he'd keep dwelling on it. "The only way out was to keep going."

Pavus got in close to him, crouched down, peered close to his face, then pulled back before Bull could shove him away. "It's as I thought," he said. "No scars from your mouth being sewn shut, which means I'm the mage, here, not you. I've had training to handle, if not this situation, then similar ones; I can't say I was prepared, but I know how to deal with it. I will make you rest if I have to _sit_ on you. I can drag your arse though water, but I absolutely refuse to drag you through these tunnels and back through Darktown when you collapse from the strain on your mind. Do you understand?"

Well.

That was a greater level of concern than he expected to see from an employer. From what he'd seen of the South, mercenaries were just bodies to be thrown at a problem, and not even beloved, cherished bodies, yoked together and working toward a single higher purpose—lives used up like arrows in a quiver. Fisher had gotten them into all kinds of sketchy jobs, which was half the reason Bull had gone from the Bleeders' token Tal-Vashoth to a mercenary captain in under six months. It hadn't been the plan, but it worked.

Even a 'Vint could be trusted, if their own self-interest meant not stabbing you the back. It didn't mean anything. But Pavus sure looked concerned. There was a smear of something on his face—dirt, his own blood. It, and the light from Glowball, hovering at the roof of the passageway, softened his features, made them less altus.

"Whatever you say, boss," Bull said. "Two hours."

"Then I'll say four, and you'll say three, and we'll come to an accord."

"Three, then. If we get attacked, don't wake me."

"I'll kill those who mean you harm as quietly as a mouse," Pavus said, which a smile that was broad, reassuring, and completely false.

Bull shut his eyes. He didn't sleep. He wasn't going to. _You shouldn't be down here_ still echoed in his mind, but it was only his own thoughts, now. On Seheron, he'd been touched by magic once before, blood magic, but only for a second, before an arrow had caught the magister in the eye. He'd felt himself lift his axe to turn it on the soldier fighting next to him, and then dropped it in the moment of the mage's death.

If he dwelled on it, he wouldn't stop. He evened his breathing, like he'd learned in school, sitting in rows with other children. There had been two elves—they weren't supposed to think of them as elves, they were all qunari—who'd taken a liking to Ashkaari, and their reed mats had been next to his, every day.

Breathe in, a tama, one who wasn't his, said, at the head of the class. Imagine the tide coming in, sweeping up the shells from the beach. Breathe out. The water goes back to the sea. Everything is a cycle. Your breath is the sea, is the sunrise and set, is the phases of the moon. In. The kids next to him hadn't been as good at it as he was, and it'd been Ashkaari's job to set an example by _not fidgeting_. He was made big so he could hold the whole Qun in him. Out. A hundred ragged people, standing in line, waiting to die, shuffling forward every few moments, thinking in unison. In. Breathing in unison. Out. It was silent, and they were all alone.

He had three hours, healer's orders. He cracked his eye open. The door, bare of the sigil that had lit it up—how long ago had it been?—loomed over them, silent. If he wasn't going to sleep, he may as well retrace their steps out of this shithole. In his mind's eye, he brought the tunnel up around him, stretching vast into the darkness, followed the branching paths, listed off the landmarks he'd given himself to remember, until he got to the ladder, the hatch. The little town under the city, lit by sleepy old spirits. The sunlight pouring into Darktown through the holes in the cliffside. The mine elevator. Fresh air. And back down again, until he imagined he could see himself, his body, leaning against the wall.

At some point, mercifully, he fell asleep.

*

Pavus had been right about one thing, at least: when Bull woke up, he still felt like shit. Not so crappy that he couldn't hold his axe, but before he could even attempt to pick up his pack, Pavus returned the book he'd been reading to its designated pouch and held his arms out, then slung Bull's bag and bedroll over his shoulder. No one had offered to carry something for him since he'd been old enough to be carried himself.

It was a shorter walk than Bull remembered, back to the crossroads. Half an hour, tops. Glowball stayed at Pavus's shoulder, like a bird perched there, until they emerged into the clearing.

"Let's try this again," Pavus said, and pulled a thick piece of white chalk from one of his twenty or so pockets to mark the path they'd gone down with a heavy X.

"I don't think we'll forget where we just came from," Bull said dryly.

"You'd be amazed at how confused one gets, underground—not you, of course, Ser Memory. But I do believe in taking all possible precautions." Pavus tucked the chalk away. "In any event, neither of us are in any state to keep going. Shall we spend the rest of the day recuperating?"

Bull didn't even know what time of day it was. Sleep was tugging at his mind again. If something came out of nowhere at them, he wasn't in any state to fight it, and he knew it. He accepted his pack back from Pavus and ran a hand over his face, his neck. "I'll take the first watch," he said. "You sleep."

"Don't be ridiculous," Pavus replied. "I'll wake you up in five hours, and you can take over the watch once you've rested a bit more."

He didn't wake Bull up at all. In the morning, Bull found Pavus dozing light, head resting on his own pack, bedroll forgotten. He bit back his disgusted sigh. Pavus looked more peaceful in his sleep—younger—how old was the guy, anyway? But it was irresponsible, falling asleep on watch like that. Krem would be shitting himself.

If it really was morning above them, Krem would be leading anyone who'd follow him on a run, which, in Kirkwall, was dangerous at best and downright stupid at worst. _Can't afford to get sick, Chief_ , he'd grunt out in the middle of doing chin-ups on whatever would hold him. _Gotta stay in top shape_. That particular paranoia would take him years to unlearn, Bull was sure. Stitches had said something about wanting to go up Sundermount during the wait, to see the Dalish ghosts, or something. Rocky would be up at the walls of jet, having wet dreams about how he'd bring them down. Everyone was free to do what they wanted.

The thought soothed him in a way his attempt at meditating yesterday hadn't. He knew he couldn't get attached to these _bas_ , that the Iron Bull was a fiction built out of all the things people thought qunari denied themselves—sex, jokes, good food, strong drink—but the first job he'd tried to get them as their captain, he'd thrown a table out a window in rage and walked out of the meeting. The noble had promised a personal kickback if he'd just sacrifice ten of his people for something that'd benefit the guy.

They'd stared at him blankly when he told them to march out, glancing from him to the pile of splinters on the lawn. _What's the problem?_ he'd said. _Lead in your boots? We're leaving._

 _We know it was a fishy job, ser,_ someone had piped up, from the back. One of the archers. Brown-haired elf, wiry, pinched face. Much older than the rest, in her forties. A career mercenary. He hadn't even known her name at the time, for fuck's sake. _But the lordship pays well. Always does, and on time, too. We don't mind, really._

_Yeah? Start minding, soldier. From here on in, we're strictly aboveboard. None of you are dying for money if I can help it. Got it?_

They hadn't believed him then. They still didn't believe him. They would.

There was a disgusting taste in his mouth, and he rummaged around his pack for some tooth powder and some rations. When he lumbered to his feet to stretch, he dislodged a few rocks on the tunnel wall. In the moment they hit the floor, Pavus jerked upright and sent a bolt of lightning in Bull's direction, which only arced out of the way at the last second, to hit the tunnel ceiling.

"Good morning to you, too," Bull said, around a mouth of jerky. "Sleep well?"

"Like a baby," Pavus said, but Bull could have fit a day's worth of rations in the bags under his eyes. Maybe the Veil really was that thin here. Who knew what had gotten into Pavus's dreams. As long as he didn't break out in a case of the demons, Bull wasn't too concerned.

They packed up and headed down the leftmost path, and after two hours' walking, they came to a dead end. That was great news. Nothing freaky, just a sheer, semi-circular rock face with no visible purpose but to make you feel like you wasted your time. Still, Pavus wanted a look at it. Glowball kept its distance, lighting the wall evenly, from corner to corner.

"Her name was Herminia," Pavus said, running his hand over something Bull couldn't see. "Seventh Magister Pavarius, if I remember my family history. Before she took the seat of power, she ran off to what would one day be the Free Marches to do… Maker knows what. There's no documentation as to what she did in her years in Emerius but this"—he patted the book at his hip—"and this." He indicated the wall, the tunnels. "Would you mind if I ran a little test?"

"Do what you need to," Bull said.

Pavus placed a hand against the wall, like he had yesterday, with the door. Bull felt panic rise in him. Just like yesterday, the wall lit in with sigil, this one more complicated than the last.

"There's something on the other side of the wall, but it's been completely cut off," Pavus stated, pulling his hand back. It was smoking, but it didn't smell burned, and if he was in pain, he wasn't showing it. "Even from me. Thank the Maker."

"What if what you want is on the other side?" Bull asked.

"It's not," said Pavus. "I promise you, it is very much _not_ there."

So not only was something bricked up there, something bad was bricked up, something that had even an altus spooked. Pavus was a Tevinter, but he wasn't stupid, clearly. After Pavus made a sketch of the sigil, they turned back around to return to the crossroads.

Something had been through their camp. Bull saw it right away: his pack, which he'd left behind, was slightly open, where it had been tied tightly closed when they left. If something was down here with them and Glowball, they would have noticed it by now, and there was no reason to go through Bull's pack and not Pavus's. Maybe his memory was deceiving him, maybe he'd left it open in the first place, but he doubted it.

Still, better not to say anything until he was sure.

"What do you think was back there?" Bull asked, to distract himself from the mystery of the open pack. There were only two paths left. Fifty-fifty odds. It was a comfort.

"What you saw on the wall was a very powerful binding mark," Pavus said. "When these cliffs are dust, it will still be standing—everything down here has lasted nearly a thousand years without breaking down or being corrupted. It's incredible, really. Magister Herminia and her mages knew what they was doing."

"What do you mean, _everything_ down here?"

"I wish you could see it as I do, Iron Bull," Pavus said, slinging his pack and bedroll over his shoulder. "Every surface is suffused with magic. It's like... motes of gold dust in my vision, if I look sidewards at something."

"And you didn't want to tell me that?" Bull glanced down at his feet. Nothing there but smooth stone.

Pavus marked the passage they'd gone down with white chalk. "What good would it have done? It's unusually magical, but none of it is harmful, so far as I can tell. Or, at least, it hasn't harmed us, which is the same thing."

Bull didn't see the distinction, but he didn't need a lecture about it. He kept quiet as Pavus led them down the third of the paths. As they went, Bull could hear—something. The sound of water, dripping in the distance. The sound of a river, or the sea lapping against the hull of a ship. It couldn't be all of those things at once, but it was. He had to be imagining it.

"You're not imagining it," Pavus said. Even in the dim light, the strain on his face was visible. "I hear a fire."

"I don't hear anything," Bull said. He'd been led astray once by an illusion, down here. It wasn't happening again.

"Denying it won't help." Pavus sent Glowball ahead of them, leaving them in half-darkness. "Tell me what you're hearing."

A stream in the mountains. Raindrops spattering against a thick glass window. Bull settled on, "Water," and left it at that.

Or tried to, at least. There was a solid ten minutes of peace and quiet. He could _feel_ Pavus thinking. Maybe if he just asked to not get a lecture about whatever freaky crap was happening now, or about to happen, Pavus would keep quiet. No. Nothing had popped out and tried to rip their heads off yet, but this place didn't mean them well. Ignorance about your enemy was even more dangerous than your enemies.

"You're still rattled about the Chamber," Pavus said, once he clearly couldn't stand it anymore.

"It tried to kill us," said Bull. "If I had my way, I'd bring a few barrels of gaatlok down here and bring it all down." The passage had widened enough for them to walk side by side, now. It saved them the trouble of little games, who got to be ahead, the big qunari or the tough mage. Their shoulders didn't brush, either, which was less comforting than Bull had thought it'd be. No qunari ever had to go it alone, if they were messed up, not if they didn't want to. Nobody _touched_ each other, this far south.

"You've had access to gaatlok in the past?"

"Enough times to know how to use it. If you want the formula out of me, you're barking up the wrong tree, big guy. I was just a grunt on Seheron." Or he'd played one, for a few years. If they'd wanted a grunt, they got a grunt. If they'd wanted a Sten, they got a Sten. Moving between ranks hadn't grated on Bull's ego as much as being treated like an idiot mercenary did.

"Which explains the scars," Pavus said. "But not how a mere—grunt, as you say—got his hands on gaatlok. I'm given to understand it's reserved only for your sappers and demolitions experts."

At Pavus's sly little smile, Bull let out a laugh. So he'd been caught out in a lie. That was rare. "I'm Tal-Vashoth for a reason, Pavus. I tried to smuggle it to some Fog Warriors I'd befriended, got caught by the Ben-Hassrath, and bolted for the mainland faster than you can say 'qamek.'"

That seemed to satisfy Pavus, at least for the moment. It was partly true: he _had_ befriended a company of Fog Warriors. It had taken him six long months. He'd gotten them medical supplies for the wounded elven slaves they were taking care of, offered to slip them a pouch of gaatlok, which would have been nothing but ashes, to use against a Tevinter fortress, and he'd been within an inch of getting one of them to tell him where their supply caches were in the jungle, but he'd turned up to their camp one day, and they were all dead. He'd never figured out who did the deed. The unit he'd been stationed with tolerated the Fog Warriors, there hadn't been any higher-ranking Ben-Hassrath in the area to order a raid, and one of his 'Vint contacts at the time swore up and down her side hadn't done it, either. In the end, he'd shrugged it off. It was a war. Shit happened. Their replacements decided to blame the 'Vints, and spent the next year harassing them instead of the qunari, so it all turned out fine, in the end.

"The Chamber," Pavus repeated. "Before we proceed, I think you should tell me what you saw there."

 _You shouldn't be down here._ "You first," Bull said.

"My ancestor, of course. Magister Herminia, floating above the water, supervising a ritual sacrifice," said Pavus. He was trying too hard to be breezy about it. "Well—I was her, and I was thinking of how long this was taking—I was _bored_. A hundred seventy-nine people were dying at my order, and all I could think of was how banal it was. There, I've had my moment of honesty," he said. "Your turn."

"I was watching the slaves in line. I could hear them thinking about getting away. They knew what was waiting for them," Bull said, more harshly than he'd intended. His voice echoed down the tunnel. Glowball, who he hadn't even thought of in an hour, wavered in the air, like it was flinching. "So what?"

"It may not have anything to do with anything," Pavus said. "I just thought we should get it out in the air. Not let it fester inside us. Clear our minds for what's ahead."

If anything was ahead at all. Maybe whoever had written the book was a crackpot, and nothing was down here at all. Part of him—the part that was getting to like Pavus, who'd saved his life, and offered to carry his bags—his standards for decency in 'Vints were pretty low—almost wanted to find the damn tomb, just so this wouldn't all be wasted. "I'd have thought a 'Vint would be used to hearing about that kind of thing. Sacrifices, and all that. Comes with the history."

"Of course it was unpleasant. We're not all murderous Old God cultists, you know." Pavus rolled his eyes. "I'm not surprised that the blood of a killer runs in my veins. I _know_ we've done horrific things. My family is hardly exempt. But what matters is where Tevinter goes from here, not self-flagellating over the blood on our hands."

Bull didn't have anything to say to that little speech. Poisoned bread, burned villages, dead converts—better in the ground than qunari—shit, it must be nice to be Dorian Pavus, and live in a world where all that was abstract, and his country could be redeemed, if only they just looked _forward_.

At least Pavus seemed to sense his misstep, because he sighed, looked like he was about to apologize to the person who would have his back when something tried to rip their heads off, and then immediately stepped in it again: "Your Qun must do some awful things, as well," he said.

"We're not debating this," Bull said. "Drop it." The last time someone who seemed like she liked and respected him had wanted a nice, reasoned discussion, he'd ended up missing two fingers. That had been a long two months being prodded at in Minrathous before they got him out, and the last time he tangled with an altus. If he could go back to her, he would say: _Maybe it does some shitty things_ —and he'd gesture to himself, his scars— _but fuck me if it isn't better than the alternatives._

"Consider the subject dead," Pavus replied, and that was that.

Worked for Bull. No sense in dragging it out. He'd figure out that his country was a mess on his own, or he wouldn't; either way, they would never see each other again after this. They'd hit the dead end soon enough, turn around, try the last path, find nothing there, and go back up to the surface.

There wasn't a dead end. There wasn't even _an_ end.

It was another three days of walking before they found anything at all.

*

"I suppose the Nevarrans had to have gotten the idea from somewhere," Pavus said, and held up a hand. Five lights bloomed from his fingertips to join Glowball. It still wasn't enough to light the space they'd come out into. "It's a bit..."

"Gruesome," Bull offered. "Freaky. Weird."

"A bit much. Ghoulish, even for the old Imperium."

"That, too."

It looked like a little town square, but for the structural columns: a dry fountain built around a central column, streaked by water that hadn't run for hundreds of years. Statues around it, evenly spaced out—facing the four directions, if he had to guess. His compass had quit working two days ago. He'd stopped looking at it.

And then there were the tombs themselves: twenty-one sealed up doors, each with another statue outside it. They were about a thousand years too late to be able to tell if they were likenesses of the inhabitants. Pavus, aside from being tired as a packhorse, looked pleased.

It had been a long walk. Too quiet. He'd even started provoking lectures from Pavus, just to hear something other than their breathing and their footfalls, and the little sounds he swore he could hear from Glowball, if it got quiet enough. At least Pavus was a good speaker, had a nice voice, which he liked the sound of even more than Bull did, and he knew a little something about anything Bull could possibly bring up, as long as they kept it away from politics. Sure, he meandered around the point, which was a quality Bull liked in the bedroom. Less so, in a conversationalist. But he got there eventually, and it ate up the miles, and now Bull knew more than he'd ever wanted to know about the Veil, Tevinter's attempts to map the Fade, isolated dialects in the Anderfels and in Rivian, and the similarities thereof, columnar basalt formations on the Storm Coast, and the production of Fereldan ale.

Now he was making a circuit of the room, while Bull watched, unable to force himself to go in.

"You tired?" Bull asked. 

"Not particularly, no."

"You'll run your mouth about anything else under the sun," Bull said, "but not whether you're going to hold up for the trip back to Kirkwall? You're not fine."

Pavus passed a hand over his face. The lights he'd put up dimmed, and then surged back to full brightness. Bull had seen that gesture fifty times over the past few days, but he'd been too wrapped up in himself to process it.

"The Veil," Pavus said, at last. "It's thinner than anything I've ever experienced, down here. You must feel its effects, even if you're not entirely aware of it."

Bull took stock of his emotions: nerves. The desire to hit something. Thinking more about Seheron than usual, but he'd spent the last five days in the company of a 'Vint. Occasionally, pants-shitting terror, like the moment he pulled out his compass and found the needle swinging in a lazy circle. "I'm not a mage. Shouldn't affect me, right?" he asked.

"I don't think it matters. If I scratched the Veil, it would rip open. And with that cheerful thought, you may as well come in."

"Iron Bull's good out here," Bull said, from the doorway. The sigil on it had flared purple for just an instant before the door itself had crumbled to dust. Whatever was in there, no one was much worried about it getting out, which was not even a little reassuring. "You have fun, big guy."

"Never tell me you're _frightened_ ," said Pavus. "After what we've seen? Come along, we've made it, let's make camp."

"Let's get our shit and get out," Bull said. "Narrow it down to three or four tombs, break into them, call it a day."

"We're starving. I'm exhausted. We're nearly out of water, and it will take mana for me to make more. If I'm exhausted and starving, my mana will replenish itself that much more slowly."

"You haven't been doing that much magic."

The haunted look that passed over Dorian's face told Bull that he had, in fact, been doing _that much magic._

He'd looked tired since the first day, but now he looked haggard, and Bull hadn't noticed. In four days of traveling, he hadn't seen a thing. "I'll get a fire going," Bull said, forcing himself to take a step forward into the chamber. And another. They were just steps. Pavus would already be lecturing him if anything bad was going to happen. "You take a rest."

Glowball was making a slow round of the tombs, pausing at each door like it had an agenda. Nice of it to help them out. Maybe it'd save them the trouble of breaking into all of them.

"Twenty-one in all," Pavus said, sitting against the base of a statue and rooting in his pack for a piece of hard cheese, which he bit into with a relish that was almost sexual. "Three sevens. Two-and-one. I can't think of a ritual significance for the number."

"Maybe they just buried twenty-one people down here."

"The old magisters never did anything without reason. Look at the statues." He indicated the one next to the door nearest them, an old man, bent over slightly at the waist, clutching his forehead. "That's a classical pose—Maferath's Regret—but it's very much not Maferath. There _must_ be a reason."

"Being down here isn't good for you," Bull said flatly. "It's not good for me, either. Let's just get this out of the way. Herminia was a woman, right? Narrows it down."

Not nearly enough. Fourteen of the tombs had women's statues out front. Bull followed along as Pavus examined each one, referring to a battered old dictionary and notebook for... who knew. Clues. If Bull had his way, he would've just broken into each one—they were just tombs. Dead bodies were just that: dead, inert, not worthy of preserving. What they'd done in life mattered. The 'Vints on Seheron had burned their dead, too.

After two hours' work, Pavus managed to narrow it down to three tombs. Bull had taken a nap, halfway through, and told Pavus to wake him up if something needed to be dismembered, which was what he was here for in the first place.

"The first one is the least likely, but its crest is similar enough to my family's that it wouldn't hurt to take a look," Pavus said. Bull yawned and stretched, and watched through a slit eye at Pavus's appreciative glance. He flexed his left pec. Didn't hurt to throw the guy a bone once in a while, give him something nice to remember about this trip. "The second two show signs of... you don't care, do you."

"Not at all," Bull said. "They're more likely. Got it. Does it bug you? Breaking into the tombs."

"We're here do a job," said Pavus, "not become sentimental about necropolises, if this is in fact a necropolis."

"You think it might be something different?"

"I think I can't let my modern assumptions color the situation." Pavus rummaged through his pack and took out a piece of hard cheese, which he bit into with an almost sexual relish. "This could be a funerary complex, but while Nevarrans inter their dead in groups, the old Imperium didn't. Where we do find tombs, they're isolated. Never twenty at a time."

Pavus sounded disturbed at the thought, rather than curious. "Maybe it's just some weird Kirkwall crap," Bull said. "Kirkwall being the weird crap captial of Thedas. Who knows."

"The crapital, even," Pavus said, and that, right there, was the first smile either of them had cracked in the last two days.

Pavus spent some time sketching the chamber, and annotating his sketch, while Bull took out a whetstone and gave his axe a good sharpening. This was the end of the line. There was no such thing as _too_ paranoid, when you were sitting in the middle of a bunch of dead Tevinters. He'd learned that one in a room with _live_ Tevinters.

He looked up to suggest they get on with the task at hand, only to find that Pavus had fallen asleep with his charcoal in hand. He hadn't made the mistake of thinking Pavus was actually sleeping when he looked like he was since that first day, but he hadn't really looked, either. If he was actually out, it wasn't a peaceful sleep. Pavus's mouth was bracketed in a deep frown, and his brow twitched every now and then. If they'd both been qunari, Bull would have gone over and put an arm over his shoulders, let him know he wasn't alone, even unconscious. If they'd both been qunari, Pavus's mouth would have been sewn shut, and Bull wouldn't have seen him, except when it came time to burn down some buildings.

Krem would be fine under the Qun—he was so used to trying to keep attention off himself, to falling neatly in line, that it was a fight to get him to mouth off. The rest of the crew would be made over into laborers, or worse. Better not to think about it. He adjusted his breathing for mindfulness, and kept watching over Pavus and the tombs.

"Maker," Pavus said, when he woke, hours later. He didn't look any better rested than he had before he'd gone to sleep. "I'm sorry. I'm...."

"Exhausted," Bull said.

"Yes, that." Pavus got to his feet. It was his turn to flex, now; those pants didn't leave anything to the imagination. "Shall we get to work?"

The first tomb was a bust. Nothing in it, not even a body. Pavus sat down on the empty sarcophagus and sketched out the carvings on the wall, while Bull stood outside, axe at the ready. The second tomb, when Bull finally got it open, was plastered in gold from top to bottom—no books, which meant it wasn't Pavus's ancestor. "Magister Domitia of House Unreadable, first of her name," Pavus said. "Next?"

The last tomb was in the very center of the complex. No identifying marks but a statue of a woman with her hands on her hips, which was apparently Andraste Addressing the Troops. "But my family has never been military," Pavus said. "Else I would have been shipped off to Seheron at the first opportunity, I'm sure. Maybe we would have met?"

"Maybe I would have cut your head off," Bull said.

"Maybe."

Without another word, Pavus felt around the edges of the doorframe, which was shorter than him. He'd put on a pair of thick leather gloves for the occasion, and he had his staff at the ready. A little bit of lightning arced between his hand and the corner of the door, and Pavus nodded, pleased. He backed off a few steps, waved Bull off—Bull went, he knew when something magical was about to go down—and gave his staff one languid twirl, slammed it into the ground, and let a long, sustained stream of lightning hit the door. This wasn't a piddly little bolt meant to surprise you in a fight; Bull could smell the sea-stink coming off of it.

The door didn't crumble, it _dissolved_ into nothing, to a powder finer than dust.

What they stepped into wasn't a tomb. It was an office. Sure enough, there were bookshelves lining the walls. There was a light, just like Glowball, still shining above a writing desk. Glowball went over to investigate it, and circled while Pavus started poking around. Bull, who had an ounce of good sense, stayed at the door, watching the whole room, axe at the ready. At the very back, there was a white stone sarcophagus with a heavy base, but Pavus ignored it in favor of scanning the spines of the books.

"I don't like this," Bull said. His voice sounded wrong in the space, like it was smaller than it should be. "Those books should be dust by now."

"And yet they're not," Pavus replied. He went to the desk and picked up the inkwell, dipped his finger in. It was still wet. " _That's_ peculiar."

"No shit." Bull locked his knees. Any second now, _You shouldn't be here_ would be echoing through his head again. He had a job to do. "Find what you need, let's get out of here."

"I agree wholeheartedly."

After another ten minutes of looking, while Bull got more and more twitchy, Pavus pulled a single, slim, leather-bound volume off one of the shelves.

The lid of the sarcophagus slid open and clattered to the ground. Its inhabitant, a withered husk, sat up, in a motion too smooth to be right.

"You, boy," the corpse said, in a flat, toneless voice. "You put that back right now."

Pavus dropped the book where he stood, then scrambled to pick it back up, clutch it to his chest. Bull advanced into the room, axe at the ready.

"Magister Herminia of House Pavarius," Pavus said. "I'm your descendant—"

"Put that back," it—it didn't interrupt. An interruption would have meant it did it intentionally. There wasn't any _mind_ in this thing. "Put that back now."

Bull raised his eyebrows at Pavus: _Do we run now? Do I cut off its head?_ Pavus shook his head, just a tiny bit. "Lady Magister," he tried again, as though that _thing_ could understand what he was saying. "I only want to say—"

Then Glowball slammed into the corpse's chest with a shower of purple sparks. The corpse didn't stagger, but absorbed the blow, its whole body folding in around the impact, as if to cradle it. To accept it. Then it stood up straighter and grew a foot and a half, skin stretching too tightly over its bones. Its eyes glowed like a pair of hot coals.

"You," it said, in a deeper voice, pointing its finger at Dorian. "Boy."

"Holy crap," Bull said. A dead mage, possessed by a demon. Ten years fighting 'Vints, and he'd only been unlucky enough to meet one of them twice. Lots of good soldiers had died those days. "You said our buddy there was harmless."

"I was wrong," Pavus said, taking a step backward, eyes on the thing, which was testing its limbs. "If you're going to be angry, I'd recommend you do it later."

"Drop the book," Bull said. He'd seen what these things could do. "Come on, we're running. The two of us can't take this thing on." Pavus wasn't a small guy, but Bull would carry his ass out if he had to.

The corpse crooked its finger. There was a sucking sensation over Bull's whole body, but it was Pavus who went flying toward it, to be suspended in mid-air, his arms splayed out in front of him and his head lolling back. His staff dropped to the ground with a clatter, then rolled against the bookshelf, forgotten.

A good mercenary would know when a job had gone south, regardless of whether the job had saved his ass once already. A good mercenary would know that nobody in the whole South would hold him accountable for some 'Vint going missing in the sewers, and that now would be the time to cut his losses and get out alive, because he had a company that needed a captain, and that saying yes had been a stupid idea to begin with.

The Iron Bull hadn't been made to be a mercenary. He was only a spy by accident. He was made to solve problems with whatever was at hand, and if all he had at hand was a greataxe and the element of surprise, he was going to use it.

Maybe the corpse had been too long in that box, or maybe it was absorbed in trying to do whatever it was trying to do to Pavus's mind, because it didn't seem to notice Bull circling it. He nearly tripped over the book Pavus dropped, in his attempt to move silently, but the thing didn't notice that, either. One good shot at its head would distract it, but Pavus's arms fell to his side, and Bull knew didn't have time to think. He wound up and took a heavy swing at it—and the blow rang up and down the bones of Bull's arms. His blade did nothing, when it hit, didn't make a dent.

But it made it drop Pavus to the ground, where he crumpled in an unmoving heap.

Bull could take his axe and maybe hope to land a real hit, or he could take Pavus. Either way, he died. So he tossed his axe aside, lurched forward, grabbed Pavus by the arm, and with a strength he hadn't known he had, he dragged Pavus out of the tomb. The corpse rushed at them, its hideous legs stretched out in a parody of running, but it slammed into a barrier at the door. That wasn't going to last for long, Bull thought, around the howling in his head, and dragged Pavus to where their packs were, to grab the little hand-axe he'd brought down with them. Better a blade in his hand than nothing.

He'd had to let Pavus go to do it. With a groan, Pavus forced himself to his feet, his face scrunched up in agony. "You _idiot_ ," were the first words out of his mouth, "that's an arcane horror, you should have run, don't tell me this is some bizarre qunari honor-debt—"

"You're babbling," Bull said. "Come on, we've got a second, grab what you can."

"We don't," Pavus said, jerking his head toward the tomb, just as the entire front of exploded in a shower of rock.

*

They ran.

It was three days back to the crossroads. They couldn't outpace it for three days, no matter how many of those little barriers it ran into on the way up. Somebody had been prepared for this eventuality, at least. The strongest of them held it back it for an hour at a time, which was enough for them to catch a breath, for Pavus to try to find the next barrier and pour his raw, unfocused magic into it, to shore it up, but the magic was too old, and he didn't know what he was doing with it. No time to sleep. No water, no food.

"For what it's worth," Pavus said, in one of their longer breathers, "I've been an ass, and I'm sorry."

"Don't mention it." They'd been at this for four hours. Bull wasn't in the mood for emotional disclosures. All they had was a hatchet, a dagger, which he'd given to Pavus. A mage with no staff, and therefore no way to do anything but blow shit up, like a saarebas, was useful. They'd left the abomination twenty minutes behind them, and with one more weak barrier in the way, one Pavus hadn't been able to do anything with, which it'd get through in in five minutes, tops. "Come on, let's keep moving."

There was a jagged screech in the tunnel behind them. The echo wrapped around Bull's throat like a hand. Without Glowball, or whatever kind of demon it'd been following them down there, Pavus had to keep his own thin, weak light going, and it dimmed down to almost nothing when he was trying something on a barrier. It dimmed now, at the sound.

"Stay with me, big guy," Bull said, putting his arm around Pavus's shoulders and squeezing, aiming him back to the surface.

Pavus shrugged him off. "Don't coddle me," he said.

"That thing's gonna catch up to us. We'll have to stop to sleep eventually. If you've got an idea that's better than 'keep going as far as we can,' I want to hear it," Bull said, and looked over his shoulder. Was there was a light in the distance, or was he imagining it? His stomach did a backflip. Failure, he could have handled. They wouldn't have gotten lost, not with his memory, but he could have handled that, too. Demon crap—not even twice his normal fee was enough to cover this.

There _was_ a light in the distance. The moment Bull noticed, Pavus said, "It broke through," with a shudder, and took Bull's hand to pull him onward, like he needed any prompting.

They'd rested enough for a brisk walk. At the sound of a distant screech, then a low rumble that shook the rocks around them, Bull found the energy for a light jog, and Pavus probably didn't have it in him, but he kept pace. What he was running on, Bull couldn't even imagine.

Five minutes of that, and the horror was in sight—they'd done this four times already. Their only hope each time was getting past a barrier, and Pavus wasn't saying anything about one coming up. "Shit," Bull said, readying his axe. " _Shit_."

Pavus raised his hand in a broad arc, and a sheet of ice up sprung up across the wall the cave. "They don't like the cold," he explained, panting from the effort. "It's the best I can do. It should hold her for a few minutes—"

A jagged crack appeared in the center of the ice. Pavus's hand squeezed Bull's, harder than Bull had thought possible.

"Or not," Bull said. "Come on, maybe the next barrier is coming up and we'll be fine."

He only needed one look at Pavus's grim face to know that wasn't the case. There was blood dripping from his nose and one of his ears, and Pavus wiped it away hastily. Bull had seen that one in saarebas whose handlers used them too hard: mana drain. One last stand it was, then.

The next crack in the ice, Bull felt as much as heard. His whole body said _Stand and fight, take a chunk out of this thing, make it pay for every bit your soul it's gonna suck out,_ but he had people waiting for him on the surface, a lieutenant who wasn't ready to lead on his own, Ben-Hassrath in the city who'd asked him out for drinks—reports to turn in to his superiors. A bolt of fire hit the rock above them, and Pavus shouldered Bull out of the way, taking it on his own back. If it could get an attack through, they were already dead. The last crack shattered the wall, and Bull broke out into a flat run, dragging Pavus behind him.

He almost didn't see the door when he passed it.

Pavus did, and dragged on his heels, and Bull figured—if it was important enough to risk their lives trying to stop a qunari going full speed, it was important to stop for a second. Hand outstretched, he sent out a bolt of ice with one hand, to pepper the creature ineffectually—he might as well have been throwing snowballs—and rattled the ornate doorknob. It hadn't been there on their way down. It was their only chance, and it would not fucking open.

"Keep it busy," Bull said. "Give me a second."

"We don't _have_ a second," Pavus said, and put his finger to his temple and sent out a wave of force, which knocked the creature back all of a foot. "Open the bloody door."

Bull dropped his axe, grabbed the knob with both hands, gave it one mighty _wrench_ , and it turned. He grabbed Pavus by the upper arm and tossed him in, then ran in and slammed it behind him, fast as he could.

There was a single mighty pounding, and then silence. Bull's eyes adjusted to the—brightness. Sunlight, or what looked like it, further in. They were miles belowground. Pavus took one step, and then his knees buckled, and he felt on his face on the wooden platform they were standing on.

"Welcome," a croaking voice said, from deep in the cavernous room, "to the Black Emporium."


	3. Spark to Wire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"I've got an idea." Dorian extracted himself. He set a heavy grey pouch gingerly on the floor before Bull. "It's a horrible idea, and you're not going to like it at all."_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _Then he explained what he had in mind._  
> 
> _"You're right," Bull said, after some deliberation, "that may just be the worst thing I've ever heard. Let's do it."_

_Of course I don't believe in the Black Emporium, Bull._

_Everyone's heard the stories, and everyone knows it's patent nonsense, regardless of whose father's grandfather's second cousin by marriage killed a dragon and then received the fabled black envelope in the post. We'll never run into it, because it's_ not there _. When I hear one credible story from a reliable source, when I see a shred of evidence—_

_*_

"And why, exactly, have we been found worthy?" Dorian was asking the being in the middle of the room. Xenon the Antiquarian, it had introduced itself as. Bull supposed it had been a _he_ at one point, but now he was a collection of withered limbs in a chair, bathed in light.

"This is a _select establishment,_ and you are _not_ worthy for admission," the Antiquarian said, with a vehemence that would have had him spitting, if he could do anything more than sit in his chair and breathe shallowly. "Bringing a pride spirit down into my sewers, letting it loose in a body, _dreadful_ for business. I deal with it least once a month. Idiots, searching the sewers for the Emporium"—it seemed to lean forward in its chair—"but you were not looking, _were_ you?"

"Ah—no," Dorian said. "Not at all."

"Peculiar," said the Antiquarian. "What else is there of value?"

"Can't imagine," Bull muttered, and went back to looking at the axes the Emporium had for sale.

They'd both slept for a solid eighteen hours, once the Antiquarian assured Bull that nothing was getting through the door that the Antiquarian himself didn't specifically invite in. _Very old magic,_ it had said, and let out a rattling cackle that was, all told, the least disturbing thing Bull had heard in the past week.

The Black Emporium wasn't supposed to be real, Dorian said, once he'd woken up and plundered the shop's herbal for healing supplies. _And yet, here you are_! the Antiquarian had boomed from his chair, which had been the end of that.

The deal was: they were free to rest and regroup for as long as they needed, and take anything from the shop they could use to destroy the arcane horror camped on the Antiquarian's doorstep, which the Emporium itself had somehow stopped from going any further. There was a lot more bad shit hiding out under Kirkwall. What needed to be kept under the ground, it kept under the ground. If they died in the process, the Emporium would be forced to take direct action, _But it very much avoids action, as a rule. It has already done enough to rectify your mistake. You will clean up your mess._

In return, Dorian and Bull got to keep what they took, on account of they would never see the inside of the Emporium again, because they were unworthy toads, utter nobodies, the lowest of the low, whom the Antiquarian never would have invited in if he'd had a choice. All of which worked for Bull.

It was the sunlight that freaked him out the most. Something so little, when he'd seen so much shit down here. He looked down over the edge of the railing, and there was nothing but blackness. Across the room, Dorian was peering at a mirror twice his height.

"You do _not_ have permission to gaze into the Mirror," the Antiquarian croaked, and. "Confine yourself to my staves, _toad_."

Whatever the Antiquarian had been, or whoever brought him his stock, he got around. Bull recognized a qunari-made greatsword, back from their first shot at converting the South; old, old Dalish longbows, made of vhenadhal wood, like the 'bow' his own Dalish archer wielded; at least ten Antivan daggers, stamped with maker's marks from all over the country; and a lone Fereldan maul, whose handle was carved with a mabari. Dorian looked like he was having a similar realization.

"None of this should be here," Dorian said under his breath. "We were two miles below the surface, but the bloody sun is shining."

The Antiquarian's chair creaked. Off on the walkway, the birds chirped. "I will have you know: I have _very acute hearing_."

"Just admiring your hospitality," Bull said. Then he added, to Dorian, who was trying to decide between a staff with a heavy, glowing white counterweight and a staff with a nasty curved blade, "Is it magic lights made to look like sunshine?"

"No, it's genuine," said Dorian. "Possibly the only thing down here that _isn't_ magical."

"Speaking of magic." Bull picked up a broadsword and tested its balance. It was perfect. That was the problem: _everything_ was perfect. "Want to explain how this all happened?"

"Ah. That."

"Yeah."

Dorian cleared his throat, set aside both of the staves he'd been deliberating over, and took a seat. He was still wobbly on his feet. "The barriers," he began, and scrubbed at his eyes with the palms of both hands. "They were trying to keep the likes of Glowball the Secret Pride Demon out as much as they were trying to keep Magister Herminia the Corpse Abomination in. I had to part every one of them by—hand, for want of a better term. The hallucinations we experienced were a warning, I think. A very weak one, but that makes sense, considering how long the magic has been active."

"When we got back to from the second path, it looked like someone had rummaged through our packs. Another warning?" Dorian shrugged. Bull tested his fourth greataxe. Still perfect. If he could find one discernable difference in balance, in heft, he'd be able to choose. "You said Glowball was harmless," he said.

"I'm not infallible, Bull. I'd already dismissed it as nothing but an old spirit. From there, it was easy to fool me. I'm... sorry I dragged you into this."

"You sound like you've already given up, big guy—"

"You keep calling me that," Dorian interrupted. "'Big guy.'"

"For a human, you're big," Bull said. "Tall. Big hands."

"Not as big as yours." Dorian's gaze flickered up Bull's body, and, well, some people got horny after they'd looked death in the eye. The way Dorian was sitting, he was at dick height, but there was an immortal creep right behind them. Besides, no 'Vints were ever going to ride the Bull again— _there_ was a good one, he'd have to use that some other time, when he made it out of this alive—no matter how many times they'd saved each other's lives.

"I don't know what we're going to have to do to kill that thing," Bull said. "Last time I saw one get killed, it took a squad of our guys and a squad of 'Vints working together to take it down."

"I wasn't aware that ever happened."

They either worked together and lived another day to keep trying to kill each other, or they all died. "Lots of things happened on Seheron that couldn't happen in the real world. But we're only two people."

"Perhaps you might like a look at the reserve stocks," the Antiquarian said. "Where I keep my more _experimental_ items."

"We'll pass," Bull began, but Dorian's face lit up. Bull sighed and offered him a hand to get up, which he took. "Or not," he added under his breath, as Pavus pried the lid off a crate and began rifling through it.

That ate up about twenty minutes, in which time Bull finally settled on a greatsword. It was just as perfect as everything else, but it had a dawnstone hilt warmed up to the exact temperature of his skin, molded to his grip; it felt right. It felt good. He could kick demon ass with this.

"Maker's balls," Dorian said, from the crate, which he was waist deep in.

"What'd you find?"

"I've got an idea." Dorian extracted himself. He set a heavy grey pouch gingerly on the floor before Bull. "It's a horrible idea, and you're not going to like it at _all_."

Then he explained what he had in mind.

"You're right," Bull said, after some deliberation, "that may just be the worst thing I've ever heard. Let's do it."

*

"I can only imagine that, having been stopped in its tracks by a power greater than itself, it retreated to the funerary complex to lick its wounds," Dorian said. "Pride demons don't take well to being reminded there are powers greater than themselves."

"Sounds like a mage," Bull couldn't help saying. Dorian rolled his eyes. They were past petty potshots, by now. "How much longer is this going to take?"

"I'm almost finished," Dorian replied, and brought the base of his staff down on the ground. "Fixed."

Every minute they lost was a minute the abomination— _Please, Bull, it's an arcane horror, there_ is _a meaningful distinction—_ whatever—had to marshal its strength against them, but it'd already had more than a day. Dorian insisted on pausing to repair every shredded barrier they found on the way down, because, apparently, if they hadn't eroded over the course of a thousand years, they would have more than done the job.

Bull kept a lookout. His sword hand was getting itchy. What should have been a three-hour trip back down had already gone past that mark. But he was rested, he was fed, he'd gotten his hands on a weapon, and if he wasn't ready now, he never would be.

And there were the gaatlok charges in the sack on his back, which he tried very hard not to jostle too hard as he walked, were ready to go.

 _Hear me out_ , Dorian had said. _You're clearly bullshitting me about having been just a soldier, which is fair. Your past isn't important. I haven't told you much about my life, either. But you know how to use this, yes?_ He'd opened up the pouch, unscrewed the canister inside, and Bull smelled the familiar, almost-sweet tang of blackpowder. How the Antiquarian had gotten it, he did not want to know. Some formulations of gaatlok just exploded, some formulations worked like an aggressive acid, some formulations could set stone and skin on fire like they were tinder, and there was no way to tell what an unlabeled canister would do until you ignited it.

 _I might have spent some time as a sapper,_ Bull said. Seven years into his tour of duty. Thirteen full months of digging tunnels and trying not to burn his entire face off, figuring out who in the Beresaad was making dirty deals with the Ambassadoria down in Minrathous for lyrium. Lots of dead dwarves on that job. He'd never underestimate someone who came up to his waist again. _Long time ago. You want us to blow it up?_

_I want to bring the whole bloody roof down on its head. Those columns looked structurally important, didn't they?_

_You're right,_ Bull said. _That may just be the worst thing I've ever heard,_ and here he was.

He'd tested a pinch of the gaatlok in the Emporium, with the Antiquarian's permission: it was a regular old explosive. From there, it was the matter of making charges, which was an art unto itself, and which Bull hadn't been much good at on Seheron, but even a shitty preparation of gaatlok was destructive, and they didn't need precision work, here. What you did to one gaatlok charge happened to the rest simultaneously, which gave it an edge over dwarven explosives, which could only be used individually, or else needed to be connected by wires. He'd only need to set one on fire, and the rest would follow. Dorian would keep the abomination busy.

They moved onward down the tunnel. Pavus had been unusually quiet, since they'd left the Emporium. Only one lecture about the nature of barrier decay, and that was it.

"You good to do this?" Bull asked, once they'd repaired another barrier.

Dorian slammed his staff down on the ground again. It looked more like a spear than a magical object: where most of the staves he'd looked at had glowing crystals and orbs, this one had blade on the top, which also glowed, and a counterweight at the bottom. Bull approved. Dorian was clearly fine for close-quarters fighting, and there had been an explanation of how the staff deepened Dorian's mana pool, which Bull had immediately tuned out once he and the Antiquarian began arguing about the nature of mana. What mattered was, it made him tougher.

"It's not every day a pride demon tries to rip into one's mind, you know," Dorian said, "but I've recovered enough to pull my weight. If that's what you mean."

"But that's your ancestor down there, even if she's…yeah."

"She was a monster to begin with," Dorian replied bitterly. This was why qunari didn't know their own parents. It saved them the disappointment. "It'll be nice to destroy a bit of family history for good, all things considered. Pity about the library, though."

"Pity about the statues," Bull said.

"You _liked_ those?"

"Take away all the Andraste crap, and they were nice. Pretty. You see the muscles on that one Maferath?"

"Bull," Dorian said, "they're _awful._ They were truly, truly ugly. Hideous. The sort of thing a newly rich Antivan puts in their summer villa. Please, blow one up for me."

Bull snorted. "Now I've gotta take one as a souvenir."

"Maker, no."

"Just a head," Bull said. "Maybe a bicep or two. For all the memories this place has given me."

They shared a smile, at that, and a gaze that was just a second too long to be insignificant. But then the moment was over. They kept walking. Now wasn't the time for that. Maybe if they got up to the surface—not if, _when_. They were going to make it out of this fucking place alive.

Finally, they saw the entryway. The whole place was lit up with blue fire, whose light spilled out into the tunnel. Pavus snuffed out his own light and readied his staff. Bull pulled his charges from the sack and draped them over his shoulder. It wasn't the safest way to carry them, but the safest way to handle gaatlok was to not handle it at all, and Bull would need to _move_ , once they started.

"Hello, grandmother," Pavus shouted, and stepped out into the chamber ahead of Bull. "I’m back."

Bull felt the distant rushing of Dorian's barrier, felt it drop over his skin, then edged slowly into the room behind him. Dorian had circled around the abomination and was talking to it, like it could understand him, like it had a mind in there that could answer him, and it _did_. Whatever they were saying, it wasn't important. Bull made it to the first column and stuck a gaatlok charge to it.

"How unfortunate, grandson," the abomination was saying. "Blood will out in the end, you know."

"Yes, but I certainly don't intend it to be mine," said Dorian.

The next column was at the rightmost of the tombs. Just as Bull put the charge to it, his hands sweaty—that wasn't good, gaatlok reacted with water—Dorian recast his barrier and gave his staff a swing, to encase the abomination in ice.

There was a rustling in the tomb behind Bull that he didn't have time to think about. Nine charges to go. He rushed on to the next one, and heard the rustling again, only louder, and accompanied by a low groan. Eight charges to go. Demon crap was bad, but corpses were even worse. At least—he'd known it wasn't going to be as easy as sneaking around and hoping the abomination didn't notice him. This was a problem he could sink a blade into, at least.

In the middle of the room, Dorian's face was shining with sweat as he fought. Bull hadn't seen enough mages fight each other, _really_ fight each other, to know who had the upper hand, but he'd separated the abomination from its arm, which was good. And he was bleeding from his shoulder. Less good. The abomination raised its hand and tried to suck Dorian in close to it again, but Dorian planted his staff in the ground, and it only got a shower of rock from the wall behind him.

The first corpse came shambling out of its tomb, and Bull drew his sword to behead it before it could make a sound. It slumped to the side. He'd forgotten how much those things smelled, after you re-killed them. Then morecorpses came shambling from their tombs, all at once, all the way across the room, headed for Dorian. There was the chance that Dorian could fight them all, but Bull wasn't going to take it. They were _both_ coming out of this alive. Next column, charge set, and he ran for the nearest three walking corpses to take them out. His sword sheared through the first one's shoulder, down through its torso, then out. Next one, he cut clean in half at its waist, then turned and beheaded the next one with his momentum. Like cutting through wet paper. But that wasn't the danger, with corpses. The danger was that there was a _lot_ of them, and there were at least twenty dead bodies down here. The rest of the corpses, sensing a new target, turned on Bull.

"I see you have _help_ ," the abomination was hissing to Dorian. "How many do you think your oxman can take, before he's overwhelmed? Shall we find out?"

"How many bodies do you have down here?" Dorian asked. He sounded rough, but he was still standing. "I suppose it's that many."

Bull stopped paying attention to them. This, here, was what he did best. Hack, slash, get to the next objective. He was covered in black bile by the time he was down to his last three charges, and this was way more than twenty corpses. They came in groups of four and five, and they went down easy, but his arms were getting tired.

There had been more than a hundred fifty people in that line he'd seen. The line he'd _been_ , for a second. Who knew how many times they'd sacrificed people? Those bodies had had to go somewhere.

They seemed to all be coming from one of the tombs—a catacomb, mass grave, something else he didn't want to think of. He cut his way through the four that came out of it and tossed one of his charges in there. If he detonated now, he'd bring the whole place down, but at least they'd have that bit of insurance if the plan didn't work: if the corpses were this old, gaatlok would turn them to jelly. Then he grabbed the statue by the open door and dragged it in front of it. It was lighter than he'd thought it would be, but it'd hold them for a second.

He came to the tomb with the ruined front. The statue of Andraste was nothing but rubble. Dorian's old staff was broken in half, but the book they'd come for was still on the ground, so Bull grabbed it and tucked it into his belt. It'd be sweaty by the time they got out, but they'd have it.

Two charges to go. Stopping to take the book had eaten up the time he'd bought himself with the statue, and forget fighting, he ran across the room, jumping over the furrows Dorian and the abomination had carved into the ground, to place them on either side of the central column.

Here was the most dangerous part: he ran the blasting wire from the last charge to a safe distance. (There was no safe distance.) They'd come from the Emporium's stock of dwarven explosives, nothing but a rope with some yarn infused with dwarven black powder in it, but if it caught fire and would carry that flame up to the charges, they'd do. Almost finished. Dorian and the abomination were in close combat, now, near the door, just like they'd planned. But they were at a standstill: Dorian, nowhere near incapacitating it long enough to for it to not escape along with them, looked like he was slowing down. He got away long enough to down a philter of something glowing and unhealthy-looking, then got right back to it.

Flint to tinder. Spark to wire. Flame to charge.

Bull covered his ears at the sound of the blast. The central column collapsed. The rest of them—didn't. They cracked, and buckled, sure, some boulders came down from the ceiling, there wasn't a dramatic crumpling. Dorian looked over his shoulder in despair and, with an effort Bull could see, encased the abomination in a sphere of ice ten feet wide by ten feet high.

"I never said I was a _good_ sapper," Bull said. "Old gaatlok, I bet. It doesn't go bad, but we've made better versions of it in the last few hundred years. I'm used to working with the hard stuff."

Dorian made a dismissive noise. His face was covered in cuts. His shoulder had stopped bleeding, but his movements when he tried to use that arm looked painful. When he opened his mouth to speak, he had to spit out a mouthful of blood first. "I've bought us—minutes."

"The Emporium's not going to let us leave unless we do this, so we can't run again. Now what?" He didn't want to die. He always thought he'd be at peace with the end, when it came, but he was going to go down screaming, or not at all. "We didn't have a plan B. "

"No, _you_ didn't have a plan B." Dorian came up to him and held out his hand. He was limping, and badly. "Do you trust me?"

Without hesitation, Bull stretched his own hand out. Dorian seized him by the wrist, cut both their palms, and squeezed them together.

There was a white light. There was an _opening_ in Bull's mind, and he could see—all at once—the Veil around them, scarred over with gold and silver, the abomination burning its way out of its ice prison, the mass grave churning with bodies climbing over one another to get at them, the flow of mana though Dorian's body. Barely any left. There was an urging, and it was the most natural thing in the world, to mingle his own lifeforce with Dorian's own, to make that into the power the gaatlok hadn't had, and to aim all that straight at the ceiling.

He had the presence of mind to get them out before the rocks started falling, and then he peeled their palms apart, and there was nothing.

*

There was no way of telling how long the two of them were out. At least he didn't throw up, this time. He still felt like he'd been hit by a herd of druffalo, and stepped on for good measure.

"Blood magic," Bull groaned. "Could've warned me."

Dorian's voice came from somewhere Bull couldn't see. "Bull, I'm—"

"You'd better be fucking sorry," Bull snapped, and rolled onto his back. Always a feat, with his horns in the way. Dorian was also prone on the ground, his face all scraped up. "Thought you didn't like it."

"That doesn't mean I don't know how to perform it, in theory. It's meant to be the very last resort of good men," Dorian said. "I do like to think I'm a good man, at times."

"Are you a danger, now that you've used it?"

"Will I start fountaining demons, do you mean? No, I won't." 

"I trust you, then," Bull said. "Can you move?"

"You trust me again that easily?"

"No, because you just used blood magic on me without asking."

"If I'd told you, you wouldn't have agreed—"

Bull wouldn't have, but now he was in the mood to argue. "You don't know that."

"You fought on Seheron," Dorian said. "I'm sure you've seen my countrymen do heinous things. You would _never_ have agreed."

And had he even agreed to begin with? Bull tried to go over the moment before he'd taken Dorian's hand. It hadn't been like the brief blood magic compulsion he'd felt, all those years ago. In that moment, he had genuinely, honestly believed in whatever Dorian was planning on doing. He'd been wrong to, but that didn't change the facts:

"Look, what matters is, we're both alive," Bull said. "I'm not going to forgive you, but we need to get back up to the surface. It's gonna be a week. We've got no food, and no water but what you can make, and you're going to be drained for at least a day, I bet. Your arm is fucked up. My body just did something it wasn't made to do, and I feel like every bone I have is broken. We don't have anyone but each other, so let's save the ethical debate for later, all right?"

Silence. Good.

Bull rolled back onto his stomach so he wouldn't have to look at Dorian. He was going to have to have Krem hit him with a stick, after this—they weren't at that place in their friendship, but there wasn't anyone he knew that he trusted more. The faster the Chargers got out of Kirkwall, the better.

They slept some more, until Bull finally felt well enough to stand. He wasn't steady on his feet, but he didn't need to be. The book he'd tucked into his belt had been digging into his stomach, but there was no way he was giving it to Dorian now. He'd take the rest of his payment and leave. It'd fetch a good price in Val Royeaux. Call it damages. "We'll go as far as we can, and then see how we feel," he said. "All right?"

Not ten minutes into their walk—or twenty, or thirty, or an hour—they heard footfalls coming down the tunnel at them. Bull readied his axe, pushed Dorian behind him. They hadn't come this far just to die now. But it was a little elven girl, dark skin, hair in neat, tight braids any tamassran would've been proud to have done.

"Imekari," Bull said dropping to his knee to take her little hands in his. "Are you all right?"

"You have been found worthy," she said, in a solemn voice, well older than her years. She shook his hands off, rummaged around in her satchel, and handed them a black envelope. "Xenon the Antiquarian cordially invites you to peruse the Black Emporium."

 _You exceeded my expectations,_ the Antiquarian had said. The urchin, whom they were instructed to call Urchin, sat calmly in a corner with her book. _It was not difficult. Thy were not very high. But you did save the Emporium a_ great deal _of trouble. For this, you have my gratitude. The weapons will be twenty sovereigns_ each _, if you want to keep them._

And so they'd decided not to keep the weapons, which was a shame. Bull had gotten to like that dawnstone hilt. The Antiquarian let them stock up on provisions, provided them with waterskins, and threw them out on their asses for their trouble. They didn't have a map, but it was pretty straightforward up until the crossroads, at which point Bull was the map. When they got out to the town under Darktown, Bull was about ready to fall to the ground and kiss it.

Five days of hard, hard travel had done a lot to soften Bull's anger. It'd been a violation, of his mind, of the fragile trust they'd managed to build between them, but they'd saved each other's lives twice each, down there. He didn't want to let that weigh into his decision, but he also couldn't abandon him right away.

So when Dorian said, "I need a week's sleep," Bull shoved his hands into his pockets and said, "The Chargers are staying at a place by the docks. How about you?"

"I've rented a room in Hightown through the end of the month."

"You could stay with me," Bull said. "Just for the night. And then I never want to see you again."

With nothing but a mild, unsurprised raise of his eyebrows, Dorian nodded, and followed Bull mindlessly out of Darktown. Bull was still covered in corpse bile, and Dorian was still spattered with blood; people tripped over themselves to get out of their way. It was just as well. Bull wasn't in the mood to dismember someone with a hatchet. He'd gladly do it, but he wouldn't enjoy it half as much as he usually did.

They emerged into the docks, which stank like rotting fish, and it was nighttime. The Chargers had rooms above the eastern warehouses, and once again, people left them alone.

He was home now, and he had to deal with what had happened. When they got up to the rooms, it was quiet, and a note pinned to the door said, _Hey, Chief. Got a job just outside the city. Good coin. If you come back before we do, there's those little cakes you like in a box by your bed,_ in Krem's precise hand.

"Actually—I think I'll make my own way home," Dorian said, half-turning away from Bull. "There's running water there. I'm looking forward to a bath. Civilization. An excellent kitchen."

"We've got it here, too," Bull said. He sounded desperate—so what? Dorian had seen him passed out, vomiting, covered in dead body gunk. "The water, at least," he added. "You like cake? I've got cake."

"What you mean to say is, you hate me less than you hate the idea of being alone."

"Basically."

"Very well, then," said Dorian. "I can't say I was looking forward to the climb."

They bathed, each in their turn. Krem was taller than Dorian, but they had about the same build, and one of his robes fit. Bull had already eaten half the cakes by the time Dorian was finished. He'd make himself sick after a week on dried meat and stale bread, but it'd be worth it. There was a long, long pause, as they stared at each other. "What an interesting shade of pink," Dorian said, indicating Bull's robe. "How... lurid."

"C'mere," Bull said, and patted his lap. After a hesitation, Dorian came, and settled himself there. Their limbs were too long to fit together right, and they ended up sprawled on Bull's bed.

"We'll never see one another Again after this," Dorian said, partways atop Bull, his arms twining around Bull's neck.

"Not if I can help it," Bull replied, into Dorian's hair. "I'm never going east of Val Chevin again."

"And I'll never go south of Perivantium."

"Good deal," Bull said. Dorian's hand came around the back of his neck, to stroke there, then up, between his horns. "Hey. You should know. I, uh, grabbed that book you were looking for. I wasn't going to tell you, but...."

"That's very kind of you," Dorian said drowsily. "Now shut up and sleep."

And in the morning, Dorian was gone. So was the book. No note, no nothing. A fitting ending. They'd passed through each other's lives, and left a scar, but for a moment—for a few days, there—he'd genuinely liked Dorian Pavus. Liked his fire. Liked his spirit. Liked how they fought together. He'd seen them becoming friends.

But in his place was the Chargers stomping up the stairs, and Krem whooping, the angry little elf, Skinner, arguing with their Dalish 'archer,' Rocky arguing with Grim—one-sidedly—about blasting powders, Stitches berating various people for picking at their bandages.

"Oh—hey, everybody, the Chief's back!" Krem said, and gave him a crisp salute. "Find anything good in the sewers?"

"This is Kirkwall. Me and that 'Vint found a whole lot of weird crap," Bull said. Fifty or so voices snickered, as his words were relayed down the staircase. "But never mind that. Tell me what you guys were up to while I was gone."

*

_Iron Bull—_

_You mentioned in our first conversation that you bank in Val Royeaux. From there, it was a small matter of finding which establishments might deign to handle a mercenary company's money, and which ones were liberal enough to handle a Tal-Vashoth's money, and trustworthy enough to handle the Chargers' money: which left me with a very lovely old dwarven woman who confirmed that my former client's coin did, in fact, go through her._

_So I write you now, because I find myself worrying if you're quite all right. If you were to throw that concern in my face, I wouldn't be shocked. Burn the letter, if you like. Wipe your arse with it. (Better the latter than the former. The paper is excellent.) I suppose I can't reasonably ask you to forgive me, given our recent history together, but I do hope—I_ do _hope—_


End file.
